UK Government in Trouble Over Planned Digital Identity Scheme – Again

The UK government has been accused of ‘constitutional ignorance’ after spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on contracts for a digital identity scheme before it had even launched a consultation into the project.

The ‘i’ newspaper reports that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has opened a call for evidence into how best to roll out a new digital identity programme across the country. The department said it would look at ways to ‘create a new system to make digital identities as trusted and secure as official documents, such as passports’.

The government added that digital identities, available through smartphone apps and other web-based services, would hold ‘many advantages over paper documents’, including reducing fraud and widening access to ID for people unable to obtain a passport.

However, it insisted the identities would not amount to ‘digital ID cards’, the introduction of which has long been fought against in Britain.

In May, the Government revealed its intention to introduce voter ID at future elections, but it is unclear if the digital ID scheme could play a part for people who do not have a passport or driving licence as a means of verifying their identity.

A joint statement by digital minister Matt Warman and Julia Lopez, Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, said: ‘the Government is committed to realising the benefits of digital identity, without creating ID cards. Our economy is becoming increasingly digital... [and] digital use of personal identity information can be part of this journey.’

They said the consultation would look at ways to implement a ‘trusted governance system… which can oversee digital identity’ and to ‘establish the legal validity of digital identities’.

The UK is one of only 20 countries worldwide that does not have any form of national identity card. Instead, passports and driving licences are most commonly used for identification in Britain.

Government contracts

DCMS has already spent more than £600,000 on the scheme, according to official contracts. Oliver Wyman, a US-based management consultancy, was awarded more than £150,000 by DCMS in October 2020 to develop a framework for digital identities.

The company has previously suggested they could be used to replace online passwords, office security passes, car rental checks, hotel check-ins and access to government services and digital health records.

But David Davis, former Brexit minister and Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), commented that it is ‘extraordinary that the Government has spent all this money despite the matter not going to Parliament’.

He said that any digital identity scheme would ‘open up the public to the loss of information and the possible prevalence of hackers’. Mr Davis went on to say that the plans were ‘especially extraordinary in the context of vaccine certificates’.

The Government has faced a fierce backlash over plans to make vaccine passports mandatory for entry to nightclubs and other large-scale venues from September 2021, with privacy groups warning it will create a ‘two-tier society’.

Mr Davis said: ‘the argument against vaccine certificates when they were first discussed was that it was the thin end of a wedge into an ID card. Some at the time dismissed that as paranoid — but this demonstrates it was entirely real.’

It was revealed in July 2021 that one company awarded a government contract to help produce vaccine passports had previously boasted about being able to ‘redeploy’ them into national ID cards.

Entrust, a global IT firm, was awarded a contract by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in April 2021 to work on the government’s COVID vaccine certification system.

A blog post on the company’s website from February, before the contract was signed, said vaccine passports could be used to ‘consider a national ID strategy’ and ‘become part of the infrastructure of the new normal’.

A webinar hosted by the firm on mobile travel credentials stated: ‘it also doesn’t hurt that this information can be used to identify criminals and other bad actors as they move around the same system trying to hide anonymously in the crowds.'